A different view of Indian politics

Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University professor, is the doyen of subaltern studies in India — a new academic branch, which looks at society from below, focusing on what is happening among the masses at society’s base level rather than among the elite who corner all the privileges.

The renowned intellectual divides his time between the globally acclaimed New York University’s Department of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. But his finger is always on the pulse of the grass-roots in his home country. The 1947 born political theorist and historian studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, and received his PhD from the University of Rochester. He is the author of more than 20 books, monographs and edited volumes and is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. He was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for 2009 for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies.

His books include: “The Politics of the Governed: Considerations on Political Society in Most of the World (2004)”; “A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (2002)”; “A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism (1997)”; “The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993)”; and “Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (1993)”.

Soon after the change of guard in New Delhi, India’s high-powered C. Rangarajan committee announced that three out of ten Indians are horribly poor subsisting on as little as Rs47 (Dh2.8) a day in urban areas and Rs32 in the countryside. What lies in store for them in a nation governed by the unabashedly pro-rich Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who flaunts Bvlgari spectacle frames, Movado watches and Mont Blanc pens?

Weekend Review spoke with the iconic scholar about the place of the poor in India’s electoral politics, cynical games political parties play with poverty, dwindling news media’s and cinema’s interest in the marginalised, and Edward Said — flag-bearer of the Palestinian cause at Columbia. Excerpts:

Sonia Gandhi put food and cash on the poor man’s table via Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Food Security Act. So why didn’t the poor vote Congress?

When new programmes are launched, there is fanfare in the media and at meetings organised by the ruling party. But after they become routinely administered activities, no one remembers the political leadership that created the programme. It requires constant political activity at the grassroots to keep that memory alive. In the case of MGNREGA, given the lack of everyday presence of the Congress leadership at the grassroots, no one remembers that it was thought out by Sonia Gandhi’s advisory council. In states where MGNREGA is better run, the state government took credit. For instance Raman Singh, the BJP Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh and Subrata Mukherjee, the Trinamool Panchayat minister of West Bengal. And the Food Security Act is so recent that its existence has hardly registered yet.

What do you think lies in store for India’s poor under Narendra Modi?

The recent budget shows that the Modi government has shied away from taking the radical steps its corporate supporters were asking for. The hesitation is political: namely, the fear that the opposition will accuse the BJP government of being anti-poor. Perhaps Modi and his colleagues have decided to go slow on structural reforms of the economy. There was an old technique followed in the 1990s by the Narasimha Rao government (with Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister) that was called “reform by stealth”. It involved making a series of structural reforms gradually, without fanfare, in order to forestall political opposition. May be that is what will happen.

There seems to be a commitment Modi has made to spur growth by giving incentives to corporate business. Rapid growth of this kind will necessarily increase inequalities and create a sense of deprivation among poorer sections (irrespective of absolute levels of poverty which may actually decline). And leadership at state and local levels will have to tackle agitation and unrest. The pressure to continue with anti-poverty expenditures is likely to come from the state governments run by the BJP. Modi and Arun Jaitley will have to deal with the demands of their corporate sponsors and at the same time deal politically with the demands of the poor.

What’s the future of Left parties after their dismal performance?

Left parties are facing their biggest crisis since the early 1950s. Despite internal disputes and splits, the parliamentary Left generally maintained a steady base in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura which meant a significant presence in parliament. This time, their strength has been reduced to an all-time low. Even more troubling is the fact that the loss cannot be attributed merely to some temporary reverses, such as the sympathy wave for Rajiv Gandhi in 1984. There was no Modi wave this time in Bengal or Kerala. Even the Left is now admitting that old slogans, methods of organisation and mode of communication have become worn out and derelict. I do not see any chances of an immediate revival of the Left. Much of the pro-poor politics of the Left have now been taken over by relatively non-ideological regional parties such as the AIADMK and the Trinamool Congress.

Will the Left parties’ debacle rub off on underground Maoists? Will Maoists confine themselves to tribal and rural theatres or will they start wooing the urban poor?

The Maoists have deliberately chosen a strategy of building support among the largely tribal populations of the forest regions of Central India in order to carry on their armed warfare against the Indian state. They have shown little capacity or willingness to seriously enter the more prosperous agricultural regions or the cities. I don’t see the Maoists increasing their areas of support nor do I see their existing hold on their base areas weakening.

Is there a political party which really represents the interests of India’s poor or comes closest to it?

The logic of electoral politics makes it impossible for any political party to expect to win power only with the support of the poor. Nor is it possible to win elections and hold on to power merely with the support of corporate interests. Multi-class alliances are a must for large parliamentary parties. The question is one of proportions, and not only in terms of promises, but also delivery. Once again, electoral politics demands that parties make promises to satisfy everybody. But actual policies will always have differential effects on different classes and groups. By the criterion of delivery rather than promises, I don’t see either the BJP or the Congress as pro-poor.

Some regional parties such as the two Dravida parties in Tamil Nadu or the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal are high on pro-poor rhetoric. But in Tamil Nadu, in spite of substantial levels of corruption, pro-poor programmes are much better administered than elsewhere. In West Bengal, delivery systems are abysmal and clogged by networks of political patronage.

What’s your take on the Amartya Sen-Jagdish Bhagwati run-in over Modi’s suitability to govern India?

The debate has been played up by the media as some sort of championship boxing bout. Sen and Bhagwati represent opposed schools of thinking in contemporary economics. Sen is an acclaimed proponent of a rights-based approach to social entitlement and capability in which the role of government is crucial. He has never disputed the importance of growth since it is only growth that can enable government to make increased social expenditures on education, health, housing etc. for the poor. Bhagwati, on the other hand, believes that by giving incentives to private business, manufacturing growth in particular will increase creating jobs and hence additional incomes for the poor.

My own view is that the role of government is inevitable in providing livelihood to victims of rapid growth. There has never been rapid growth anywhere without increasing inequalities and, unless the democratic process is given up for an authoritarian regime of the kind that supervised growth in China or in East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s or Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, electoral politics will always demand that government adopt some pro-poor policies.

Do you think enough books are being written and films being made to acquaint well-off Indians with the misery of the poor? Does mainstream media, print and electronic, mirror their plight?

I think representation of poverty in media as well as entertainment has become utterly marginal since the 1990s. There is virtually no rural reporting at all — all newspapers and television depend on stringers for news from villages and small towns. With the rise of the multiplex and overseas audience as the mainstay of cinema, social realism has become passe and the aspiring middle class is both the protagonist and the consumer of cinema and television. The odd documentary film here and there does not change the picture.

What are your memories of Edward Said who thought so highly of you?

Though I had met and corresponded with Edward Said in the late 1980s, I got to know him well from 1997 after I became his colleague at Columbia University. By then, he had been struck by cancer and had to undergo regular spells of chemotherapy. He found it difficult to sit down comfortably and moved around with a cushion under his arm. He also had a lectern in his study at home where he would stand and write out his essays and books by longhand. But seeing him up close, I realised how remarkable a person he was.

He was a man of incredible vitality, intelligence, erudition and wisdom. It was not easy being the most well-known spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the West, especially not in a university in New York, the citadel of the Israeli lobby in the US. He handled the situation with immense skill and integrity. For instance, even though he wrote millions of words on the subject and spoke passionately on it in the media, he never taught a course on the Arab-Israel conflict or in fact said anything on it on the university campus. He valued the support that Columbia University gave him in the face of virulent public attacks, but accepted his responsibility by not involving his teaching activities in any political controversy. It was a lesson to be learnt.

S.N.M. Abdi is a noted Indian journalist and commentator.